1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to an auto microfluidic hybridization chip platform used for nucleic-acid hybridization reaction tests of samples.
2. Related Art
In recent years, molecular biology has made tremendous progress in its technology. For example, techniques such as PCR and nucleic-acid hybridization have been integrated with material sciences, bio-informatics, and electronic technology. This creates the new scope of biochips. In particular, the nucleic-acid hybridization reaction is a necessary and key procedure in the test procedures of molecular biology. The conventional nucleic acid hybridization procedure is complicated and time-consuming, which makes it the bottleneck step of the whole test. In general, hybridization reactions take about 4 to 12 hours. If one can simplify the operation and reaction time, the test can be introduced to usual point-of-care or home-care purposes. It will be the optimized solution for people being tested.
With complicated and time-consuming operation procedures, the conventional hybridization reactions require the uses of a hybridization box, a rotator, a vortex vibrator, and a scanning identification machine that cost a lot of money. Although there are already many international manufacturers in Europe, America, and Japan that apply automation technology to hybridization platforms requiring less manpower in place of the hybridization box, their specification still uses slides and cannot achieve the goal of mass filtering. For example, the products of Biogem, Genomic, PerkinElmer lifesciences, and Tecan all use such designs. The design disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,238,910 has the advantage that the hybridization chamber can accommodate two different sizes of slides. However, its drawback is also that the pipeline is exposed to the environment, inconvenient in operations.
The hybrid reaction platforms currently available on the market are designed according to the glass specification. The products are mainly for molecular biology laboratories, drug research and development institutes, and medical test centers. Most of them use high-density micro array probes. Moreover, due to their higher costs, such products are not popular in disease detection.